Born at Winnipeg in 1921, son of Kenneth Campbell Bedson (1881-1957) and Eleanore Millicent Bedson (?-1961), grandson of Samuel L. Bedson, he studied modern history at Balliol, Oxford, after serving in the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps during the Second World War. He moved to Ottawa and was a minor civil servant from 1949 to 1955. He then became George Drew’s private secretary, then John Diefenbaker’s. In 1958 he was appointed Clerk of the Manitoba Privy Council, a position he held until 1981. The next year, he became Secretary to the Cabinet of the Province of Saskatchewan, and later served as European representative of the Saskatchewan Potash Corporation in Vienna, Austria. On retirement in 1985, he returned to Winnipeg. He was President of the Manitoba Record Society. In 1977, he received the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal. In 1978 he was inducted into the Order of Canada. He died at Winnipeg on 14 May 1989 and was buried in the St. John’s Cathedral Cemetery.

See also:

Derek Bedson: Clerk of the Executive Council of Manitoba, 1958 to 1981 by Ian Wilson, MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 2001.